The third payment cleared Tuesday at 6:03 a.m. Four dollars and twenty-one cents, autodrafted, no fees, no interest, confetti animation. I want to be clear that I feel good about this. I financed a burrito in July using a buy now pay later burrito plan and I have made every single payment on time, which is more than most men my age can say about anything.
You are not going to be the guy with the bunker. Here is the next best thing: Stuff to Buy Before Everything Goes to Shit
The burrito itself has been gone since August. I know the exact date. August 9. It was a Saturday and it was not a graceful morning for either of us.
People hear that and they get weird about it. My roommate got weird about it. He said, “You’re still paying for that?” like I’d told him I was still writing letters to a woman who moved to Portugal. And yes. I am still paying for that. That’s what a payment plan is. You don’t get to stop honoring the agreement just because the asset depreciated. Everything depreciates. Cars depreciate. Homes depreciate. A chicken tinga burrito with extra guacamole, black beans, no rice because I’m being careful — that depreciates fast. Aggressively. Within about eleven hours.
The math, since everyone asks about the math
Sixteen eighty-four. That’s the burrito. Two-fifty of that is the guac, which I also financed, because the app doesn’t let you split a cart into things you can afford and things you cannot. It’s all one obligation. You want the guac, you take on the guac.
You've read this far. The least you can do is buy the "Still Weak As Shit" tee.
Four payments of $4.21. Zero percent. No credit check. It said I was “approved,” which is a word nobody had used about me in a professional context in three years, and I’m not going to pretend that didn’t land somewhere tender.
The app also told me this would “build my payment history,” and I choose to believe that. Somewhere in a server farm in Nevada there is a record showing that I am a man who follows through. That record is made entirely out of one burrito. That’s the whole ledger. That’s my legacy so far.
What it’s actually like
Here’s the part nobody warns you about with the buy now pay later burrito situation: the notifications keep coming. “Your payment for Sol y Fuego Grill is coming up!” And you get a little flush of dread, and then a little flush of confusion, because your body has completely forgotten. Your body settled up in August. Your body closed the books, filed the paperwork, and moved on with its life. Only the fintech remembers.
So you sit there at 6:03 in the morning owing money to a company on behalf of a meal that exists now only as a municipal water treatment problem, and you think: this is what they mean by the modern economy. Nothing is a transaction anymore. Everything is a relationship. I am in a relationship with a burrito. It ended badly. I’m still paying alimony.
My father bought things with cash. My father bought a whole car with cash, one time, and told the story at every holiday until he died. I’ve got one payment left on a tortilla. He’d have understood the mechanics. He’d have had questions about the guac.
Final installment posts November 4. After that I’m free and clear, no debts, nothing owed to anyone, and I’ve been thinking about celebrating.
There’s a place two blocks over doing a birria bowl. Fifteen dollars. They take the same app.